Almost everyone I know hates this album. My parents, siblings, most of my friends, even people who used to like Radiohead all despise this record. “It’s too weird”, they say. “It’s just noise”, “It doesn’t make sense”, “I don’t get it”. Indeed, this experimental LP, the forth by influential brit-rock/poppers Radiohead is extremely hard to “get”. Their decision to not release singles or videos for this album did not endear them towards mainstream media. Despite achieving top 10 status in New Zealand and worldwide, you will not hear anything from Kid A on “The Edge”. The number of people I know that have heard this album is less than 20. The number of people you know that have heard the album could easily be less than that. Most people are unlikely to ever hear it. They are missing out on a great album.
From the opening synthesizers of ‘Everything In Its Right Place’, you know this album is going to challenge you. Vocalist Thom Yorke’s voice, so often reaching heady heights in previous albums appears here looped and beaten up. The inherent power – and yet at the same time tortured fragility – of Yorke is still here, the same as always. This track reeks of irony and cynicism as while Yorke is preaching about law and order, chaos is all around him, his voice almost being drowned out in the wash of noise. Also present in this track – as it is in the entire album – is a complete lack of song structure: basically no choruses or verses to be seen.
Skipping to the title track, the huge influences can be seen already. The irregular drumbeat heard here was obviously inspired by electro-terrorist Aphex Twin or one of his many clones. Speaking of clones, ‘Kid A’ (the song, and to a lesser extent the album) is apparently about genetic engineering and the way one child will look the same as another. From a different context, it could also be about today’s society and youth and the way commercialism has ensured that people are now afraid to look any different, to expose themselves, or to even have personalities. Whatever the motive, the paranoia heard in most Radiohead songs (‘Paranoid Android’ ‘Fitter Happier’ off the hugely successful OK Computer spring to mind) is hugely evident here through the almost indecipherable lyrics delivered by a voice so slow it sounds like Hal from ‘2001, A Space Oddysey’ taken down a few notches. The anti-commercialism sentiments can also be heard in the seminal ‘Fake Plastic Trees’ from their sophomore effort, The Bends.
‘How To Disappear Completely’ is as close to a beautiful ballad that you are going to get from Radiohead nowadays, and it sounds just as nice as ‘High And Dry’ and ‘Exit Music (For A Film)’ off previous albums. Until you actually listen to the lyrics. Lines such as “That there/That’s not me/I go/Where I please” and the constant mantra of “I’m not here/This isn’t happening” is disturbingly depressing and once again Yorke tinges it with paranoia through the elongated vocals as heard in ‘Paranoid Android’.
‘Idioteque’, an obvious play on discotheque, is taking all the themes heard in ‘Kid A’ one step further. The “Aphex-y” sound is sounding like a rip-off now, and they really seem to have concentrated on the anti-commercialism stance, being particularly scathing toward the dance scene, which has a lot of mainstream popularity right now. To me, this song is concentrated at those who like dance music because it is “cool”, and the DJs who churn out processed “hits” to cater for this audience (I’m sure you will be all to familiar with The Vengaboys, Sash, Madison Avenue, and thousands of generic trance DJs). Evidence of this are the scathing lyrics, lines such as “Take the money and run”.
There are numerous good tracks on this album that I have not gone into; the cynical ‘The National Anthem’ which is almost as sarcastic as The Sex Pistols’ ‘God Save The Queen’; not the mention the beautiful strains that are ‘Optimistic’, the closest to an orthodox song on the album.
There are things wrong with this album, however. There is no one brilliant track on this like ‘Creep’, ‘Street Spirit (Fade Out)’ and ‘Paranoid Android’ (off the first, second and third albums respectively) and all of the vocals are gibberish that rarely make sense from one line to the next (however this has always been a Radiohead trademark: “Please could you stop the noise I’m trying to get some rest/From all these unborn chicken voices in my head” –‘Paranoid Android’).
I like this album because it is engaging, intellegent and challenges you to think outside the square. It is certainly a relief from the Britney Spears’ of this world and it will still mean something ten years down the track. No, this is not a perfect album. Just a great one.
